Yello,

Currently, I have a non-SLR camera without a hotshoe, but I want to buy a slave flash. I have a few questions though...
If I use a card to reflect my camera's flash upward (as to not show up in the photo) will the slave flash still fire? Or does it need to "see" my flash directly?
And what's an inexpensive brand/model that I should check out?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I don't know much about lighting rigs...yet.

I can only assume you are talking about peanut slaves... they are okay. Indoors and relatively close they will work well, but from what I have heard they don't work well long distance, and in the daylight triggering them will be much harder since there is already a bright consistant light outside, aka. the sun. You should look into saving some money and buying a digital slr, and eventually pocket wizards or sync cords if you can't afford them(pw's). And once piece of advice I can give you is that you should always remember you get what you pay for... wink wink ebay slaves are pieces of shit.

Yeah, haha...definately. Currently I'm unemployed, and I just bought my camera about 2 months ago on a 300 dollar budget (Panasonic dmc-fz8). Frankly, I'm poor and a cheapskate; so an SLR will be out of the question for a while.

I looked at Ritz and the people their say that the slave flashes they have can reach like 60 feet, so I don't think the one's I'm looking at are meant for really close shots. I don't remember the model, but they were like 80-100 bucks.

Well I am not sure how much peanut slaves run price wise, but I do know that ebay slaves are also sold at some camera stores, usually run about that price and a lot of ebay slaves are claimed have 60-100 ft ranges, which is a lie. so be careful what you buy

Well, I'm pretty sure what I'm looking at isn't a peanut slave. The ones I looked at were like these, except not as cheap-looking.




So, I dunno.

I think they run like Infra-red,

but dude, its seriously way easier just to save for a few more months and get the pocket wizards, I worked over hours and stuff to afford them in a crappy job, their the best of the best, and you will not regret anything, but if you end up buying something cheap and un-reliable it won't be worth it later on, But its up to you bro. I reckon just save as much as you can and get pockets wizards.

I would like that, but that would mean I would have to buy a whole new camera along with all the new gear. What's that, like 900 bones at least? I may just go ahead and give these flashes a shot, and if they suck wang I'll start looking for a job.

Does your camera have a sync port thing? if it does there are like hotshoe adaptors and stuff you could look into?

Nope, nothing like that.